Texas Instruments EPROM Chip

A few years back I bought a cheap mono-microscope from Lidl for about 50 bucks. The maximum magnification isn't that great (256x) and the lens quality leaves a lot to be desired, but it is a solid piece of cast iron furniture, and came with a few goodies like a mountable digital camera. That only runs at a paltry 320x280 res though to I took this pictures with my phone. I've uploaded the original resolution photos too, which you can access by clicking the images in the post.



I've had two of these Texas Instruments EPROM chips for years too. I bent the pins down in one of them to let it lie lower on the microscopes stage. As far as I know, these were manufactured in the 1980's and are 16 Kbit's in size. I couldn't find details on these exact model of chips, so apologies for any errors.



In the first image, you can see the clear window in the top, which allows a view into the magic memory circuitry inside. To reprogram the chip, these circuits had to be first exposed to UV light to destroy the previous state of each gate. I used to think that's where the term "flash" came from when referring to reprogramming a chip, but it appears to be unrelated.



As I increase the magnification, you can make out the Texas Instruments logo nestled neatly in one corner of the transistors. It really is tiny, but quite large compared to what they can achieve nowadays.



This was as far as I could go with the magnification because of the restrictions caused by the height of the chip. It's about 160x as far as I can remember.



The megabytes!! Well, not really...



I thought it best to include some kind of size reference for those who are curious.



The surface of the chip was quite interesting too! This is the little metal semi-circle you can see on the edge of the chip. These fine details were practically unnoticable to the naked eye.



Some form of chemical reaction to human sweat no doubt.



I included this shot because it reminds me a bit like the moon. It's a 40x view of the edge of the chips window.

I hope someone found this interesting (I deliberately put off posting these images until nitro2k01 got back from his holidays :) ). I also have a 5.2mp CMOS sensor from a dismantled Toshiba camcorder which I might give the same treatment sometime in the future.

I don't do HIV Safety Infomercials, but if I did...

"Sally really liked the cock, but the AIDS liked her more."

It's amazing what movie classics one can make when one is just free-styling. I think I was going for a David Cronenberg vibe. xtranormal.com is a website which allows you to make simple CGI movies by typing and adding action events to a time-line. They give you the basics: the characters, the settings... but you choose the dialogue, the actions, the music & sound effects etc. Fine tuning a movie is a bit woolly and buggy but that adds a nice sprinkling of "random" to the scene. It will kill a half an hour if youre bored at the very least.

The subtitles were added on youtube. Incidentally, this is the first video I've hosted on youtube for blogging purposes here, so it's a monumental post really.

[via Allan Cavanagh]

Them's Be Atoms!

IBM have claimed to have photographed a molecule for the first time ever, in 3D no less. Well to be honest, it is and it isn't a photograph really, but for all intensive purposes, it is! Confused? Excellent!

"Like the venerable electron microscope, but more powerful and with an eye for the third dimension, the AFM is able to make the nano world something we humans can appreciate visually. Using a silicon microscale cantilever coated in carbon dioxide (tiny, tiny needle), lasers, an "ultrahigh vacuum" and temperatures that hovered around 5 Kelvin, the AFM imaged the pentacene in nanometers. It did this while sitting a mere 0.5 nanometers above the surface and its previously invisible bonds for 20 long, unmoving hours. The length of time is noteworthy, said IBM scientist Leo Goss in statement from IBM, because any movement whatsoever would have disrupted the delicate atomic bonds and ruined the image."

[Full Gizmodo Story] [via fin Blog]

Luxembourg Rose' in Gash-Flash Shock

Viewers of Tuesday nights coverage of the Rose Of Tralee competition were offered an "undercover" view to one of participants particulars. Organisers of the competition, which is in its 50th incarnation this year, were left dumbstruck when the Luxembourg rose began her "party piece" dance routine. It quickly became apparent that her choice of garb were ill advised when parts of her "undercarriage" began to show!

Locals were quick to show their outrage. One embittered old hag declared "Tis, shcandalous! I saw more of that girl than holy God did when he was putting her together!" Another was noted as asking "Sure whats next... hard core porn on the pulpits?"

Host of the show, Ray Darcy, was quick to defend the situation: "Ah now, sure, people are always getting hot and bothered about everything these days. Sure isn't it the same view I get of women every time I meet them. Their crotch always greets me at eye level." One of the judges, TG4's in-house stud-muffin, Daithi O'Sé gave seemingly mixed views...



It is unknown what repercussions this incident will bring to the competition next year, or what smutty allegations will be cast of this years winner, the London Rose. All involved wish the best for the newly crowned "Rose" and the coming year of her reign. She will continue her celebrations on Friday, where she has been invited to dine with ex-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. He's reported to have said: "Dat's nice, I'll be digh'ed to hav'er. She looks like a lovely gal!"

Weekend Orchestra Thing

Weekend Orchestra Thing by Gamma Goblin

I threw this together on Saturday. For the last few weeks I've been wanting to try some more "orchestral" stuff... counterpoint and all those other buzz words. I guess it started around the time hydlide asked for people to submit musical compositions to grace the intro of a movie he was making. I would have wanted to do a traditional "big score" piece but since I'm shit at that I shyed away. The desire for that type of music stayed with me though and it manifested itself on Saturday last.

It started off as a string quartet but I got bored at fleshed it out with string sections and percussion. All the musical ideas where just tacked on together in a linear fashion, and they were done purely for practice rather than musical beauty, but it comes together quite well at times. Its missing woodwind sections, which is kinda annoying. I did attempt introducing woodwind motifs later but this just muddied it up.

While it's not great, I am encouraged at the kind of results you can achieve within a relatively short time-span. Composed on a laptop away from home, without a keyboard in sight, which has a lot of benefits. Oh and it's all done with standard Reason 4 Orkester refill.

I decided to upload the Reason RNS file, just in case anybody wants to have a look at it themselves: http://www.box.net/shared/523509yskj

[About the image] An edited version of an image taken from peacehealth.org. Its description: "Franz St. George, PhD, Medical Physicist, fits the Stereotactic head frame to a patient in the Gamma Knife Center in preparation for an MRI that will help precisely locate the site for surgery."

South Ring Road via Togher Road Fly Over

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Rubato Productions Inc. Present: Concert Hands™

I laughed out loud watching this video. I'm always on the look out for a teaching device I could flog in Ireland, recession or no recession. This new music device caught my eye (it could catch a lot of different body parts by the looks of it). There's deffiantely a dodgey touch of "Re-Animator" about this. I had to laugh at the picture of the woman in white; it looks like she's playing a plotter printer! lol

[via The Raw Feed]

Tara Busch - "Pilfershire Lane" Boxset

I got it today! Yay! I'll say more about it later :)

The Squirrelizer

The latest online image-generator craze: The Squirrelizer!

[via]

*SHOCK* Irish Population Is Dramatically Young!

Respect to the Mail On Sunday for letting us know these things! I guess my mother must be lying about her age so.

This Would Never Have Happened On RedFM

... well, maybe =P Don't know anything about this, or when it happened. I'm sure everyone else does though.

[via]

Yummy Fresh Milkshakes!

Billy Connolly on Catholicism: "How, not why!"

Scottish comedian and actor, Billy Connolly, expresses his views on Catholicism, religion in general, Sarah Palin, and a little bit of voodoo right at the end :)

Religious nuts always go on about Atheists being unhappy and miserable and pessimistic, and yet to me, they always seem to be the funny ones :)

[via Derren Brown]

One For The Family Album

You've made a cock of us all, Bertie.

I love a good mashup...

... don't you. All vids from youtube. I was going to include a poll here, so you could cast your vote on your feelings, but... blargh...

DSC00414

Shinjuku {music - fusion jazz}

Shinjuku by Gamma Goblin

Threw this together last night. Only a stub of a song but I like how it all came together. I can hear Esbjörn Svensson and Hiromi influences. I sometimes create music that I personally wouldn't listen to but I could listen to this all day. Shinjuku title taken from image, which was chosen because I got a good rain-in-a-city feeling when creating it. Created, as always, with Reason.

[image: "Movement#2(Shinjuku)" by Philip Lepage]

Even More LHC Problems At CERN

More problems for the Large Hadron Collider. Apparently this time it's the magnets; they are impotent and unable to get it up, up to speed that is! Last year it was bad solder joints that turned the LHC into nothing more than a $9billion firework display.

Since this thing is meant to show up magic shit involved in the creation of the universe, like the Higgs Boson particle stuff and possibly proof of higher dimensions, my question is this: When are religious nutjobs going to start saying that all these problems have been caused by the hand of god directly, to impede our discovery of his handy work. A kind of modern Tower Of Babel story. My answer to that will be, why is he messing about with electrical problems? Why doesn't he just do like he did in the past and slaughter everyone, perhaps he could send a plague of AIDS to all the staff at CERN.

Sunday Mash-Up

More Re-Animator dream, than Zombi nightmare. Just mucking about with a stock image from http://www.dreamstime.com (if you look closely you can still see the watermarks). Decided I wanted it on a background. In my mind I saw a perspective grid, but also a scene set in Cork on a gloomy day. Then I remembered a photo taken by Donncha O'Caoimh (you know, one of these days he's going to tell me stop ruining his images :) ) that I liked a lot and seemed to fit with what I imagined. Just something to kill a few minutes on a Sunday. All credit to original artists.

Anatomical Male Head by Aliencat
Paul Street Multi Story Car Park by D. O'Caoimh

Searching for high-res images of Freddie Mercury

So I was doing a spot of Google Image searching, as I often do. One of tonights search terms was Freddie Mercury. The above pic was the first image I found of note. I love UHQ images. Check out the full res version by clicking it; damn I love the HQ version, you can make out every single hair.... and on the mouse too heehee :)

http://www.matchmypet.com/Pet/PetVisitorProfile.aspx?PetId=4043


Say what you like about "Feddie Mercury the mouse" he sure holds more resemblance to the former Queen front-man than this individual. Johan Wiberg appears to be a Swedish Freddie Mercury impersonator (crazy Swedes at it again). I think he looks more like a melancholic Scat Man John to be honest, but who knows, maybe he sings like Mercury reincarnate! The high res image reviels all though; that mustache obviously sits on his bedside locker at night.

http://olaek.se/queer/Swe/Press/info.htm

 

The next UHQ image  is of Katy Perry. I think it has something to do with the fact that she has a tattoo of Freddie Mercury on her arse or something (don't we all ;-) ). Katy Perry, an interesting individual. Not the greatest looking bag of spanners in the world, but blessed with big maracas. The thing is, I saw her without makeup recently and while a bit on the dodgey side she looked much better, very natural and cute looking. That 3 inches of makeup she wears every day can't be good to her health, or the environment. Save the whales Katy, and all that other bullshit!

http://www.mytimesdispatch.com/index.php/popculture/comments...

I have no idea what this is about, but you can't argue with a caricature of Apple owner, Steve Jobs. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Steve Jobs is dying from AIDS? I'm too lazy to search through the page to find out though. The funniest part of this lnk is the name of the image: jobbydouche-2.jpg

http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/irc-log-05062009.html

And of course, to finish off, we'd have to have a proper one of the man himself :) Here he is with other Queen members John Deacon and Brian May. Mercury looks like he's trying to learn to play that troublesome 4th chord on the guitar :)

http://fallenzeraphine.deviantart.com/art/Queen-02-107043371